I’ve been tasked by our management to assess what other utilities are doing to qualify their PWR reactor engineers.  To obtain this benchmarking information the following survey was developed.  It would be appreciated to have your responses by the end of the month (July 2010). 

 

1. Particularly important to me is how long does it typically take to train a new hire to become certified as a QNE?  As a follow-on question, do you put the new hire on a schedule and track their progress?  Do you provide them with any incentives?  Do you provide them with incentives for on-time completion?

 

2. What initial training do you give to your new hires?  (e.g., General employee training, system training, blueprint reading, chemistry, etc..)

 

3. How many RE’s per year are typically trained?  Do you coordinate training for a group of RE’s to be trained or do you qualify them individually?  

 

4. Do you have internal process/procedures that you follow to qualify or certify the reactor engineers?

 

5. Do you provide each new hire with a dedicated mentor through their qualification?

 

6. Does the qualification process include both classroom and performance (or experience) based objectives?  

 

Note that I use the term qualified nuclear engineer (QNE) to indicate that the reactor engineer is qualified/certified.

 

7. Do you have your own QNE training classes or do you use a vendor for QNE training?  If you use a vendor, who do you use?

 

8. How do you cover core monitoring code proficiency (monitoring and predicts)?

 

9. If applicable, how much simulator time or training with operations is required prior to being qualified?

 

10. Does QNE qualification include special nuclear material control or custodial qualifications or do you treat this separate from the QNE?

 

11. After the RE completes all the training and experience objectives, does the RE have to obtain a final approval by an oral review board?  If this is the case, who comprises the board?

 

12. If there is a need for remediation to obtain final approval, how is this done?

 

13. Provide your QNE re-qualification requirements, if applicable.

 

14. Can you provide me with what your typical program costs to take a new hire and have that new hire qualified as a QNE?

 

15. Are there any lessons learned you have in regards to QNE training?

 

 

Please provide your responses to frank.trikur@exeloncorp.com

 

I will provide at your request an anonymous summary of these results.

 

Frank W. Trikur

RE Oversite and Emergent Issues

Nuclear Fuels

Exelon Corp.

Phone: 630-657-2182

 

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